Technical Discussion June 18 2010

How to solve the Network synchronization challenge

Some ideas

• UDP is commonly used for games and TCP for matchmaking
• Full sync every X
• timestamp interpolation
• timestepping, really fast turns that only track player actions. (AI War does this)

Software design

Piper took us through how they do software design in the software systems lab.

Objects

• players
• entity
  • ships
  • asteroids
  • projectiles
• vector
• hit points
• input
• shield
• damage
• weapon
• view

Functions

• move(entity)
• accelerate(entity)
• collision(entity, entity) // may not work in all cases
• fire(ship, weapon)
• draw(ship)

server-client model game loop

for p in Players
    input := getinput(p)
    accelerate(ship(p), input)
    fire(ship(p), input))

forall e in entity
    if e.hitpoints <= 0
        destroy(e) // all object have HP?
    move(e)
    checkCollision()

Members present

• Eric Raue
• Dave Hughes
• Jordan Fox
• Piper Jackson
• … maybe more but it wasn't recorded.